After 10 enjoyable years, I am departing, after an incessant clamor from the left that to permit me continued access to the microphones of MSNBC would be an outrage against decency, and dangerous.

The calls for my firing began almost immediately with the Oct. 18 publication of “Suicide of a Superpower: Will America Survive to 2025?”

A group called Color of Change, whose mission statement says that it “exists to strengthen Black America’s political voice,” claimed that my book espouses a “white supremacist ideology.” Color of Change took particular umbrage at the title of Chapter 4, “The End of White America.”

Media Matters parroted the party line: He has blasphemed!

A Human Rights Campaign that bills itself as America’s leading voice for lesbians, bisexuals, gays and transgendered people said that Buchanan’s “extremist ideas are incredibly harmful to millions of LBGT people around the world.”

Their rage was triggered by a remark to NPR’s Diane Rehm — that I believe homosexual acts to be “unnatural and immoral.”

On Nov. 2, Abe Foxman of the Anti-Defamation League, who has sought to have me censored for 22 years, piled on.

“Buchanan has shown himself, time and again, to be a racist and an anti-Semite,” said Foxman. Buchanan “bemoans the destruction of white Christian America” and says America’s shrinking Jewish population is due to the “collective decision of Jews themselves.”

Well, yes, I do bemoan what Newsweek’s 2009 cover called “The Decline and Fall of Christian America” and editor Jon Meacham described as “The End of Christian America.” After all, I am a Christian.

And what else explains the shrinkage of the U.S. Jewish population by 6 percent in the 1990s and its projected decline by another 50 percent by 2050, if not the “collective decision of Jews themselves”?

Let error be tolerated, said Thomas Jefferson, “so long as reason is left free to combat it.” What Foxman and ADL are about in demanding that my voice be silenced is, in the Jeffersonian sense, intrinsically un-American.

Consider what it is these people are saying.

They are saying that a respected publisher, St. Martin’s, colluded with me to produce a racist, homophobic, anti-Semitic book, and CNN, Fox News, C-SPAN, Fox Business News and the 150 radio shows on which I appeared failed to detect its evil and helped to promote a moral atrocity.

Well, this is B.S. but hopefully Pat will get a generous settlement and a new GIG soon. MSNBC and NBC News are insufferable LEFT-WING zealots.

Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorum’s big mega-donor kicked up a controversy over the issue of contraception today when he urged a return to the good old days when gals had a simple solution for it: aspirin between the knees.

We’re not kidding.

Wealthy entreprenuer Foster Freiss, who’s backed Santorum’s Super-PAC, made the statements to MSNBC’s Andrea Mitchell today, after being asked if his candidate has expressed some extremist views on contraception.

He appeared to express wonder that women even have to worry about the issue of paying for contraception these days, Politico reports. “On this contraceptive thing, my Gosh it’s such [sic] inexpensive,” he added. “You know, back in my days, they used Bayer aspirin for contraception. The gals put it between their knees, and it wasn’t that costly.”

Good grief….this entire discussion is killing the GOP.

Mr. Freiss should get back in his time machine and disappear – as should Rick Santorum.

Rick Santorum, who trailed Mitt Romney by 20 points eight days ago, has now taken the lead in Gallup’s national polling. In the Gallup poll released on February 8, Romney led Santorum by the tally of 37 to 17 percent. In the current Gallup poll, Santorum has moved into the lead — 32 to 31 percent.

While I do not think Rick Santorum is electable in a general election against President Obama, this result pretty much shows the GOP voters disgust with Mitt Romney.

Super Tuesday will tell the story and my bet now is that the nominee choice will come down to the convention in Florida this summer.

But, it has been rumored that Democrat Assemblywoman Julia Brownley, who lives in Santa Monica, but represents Oxnard and Port Hueneme in the California Assembly is looking at the race.

So, who is left in the CA-26 race (filing opened Monday, February 13 and will close on March 9).

Republican California State Senator Tony Strickland

Independent/Republican Ventura County Supervisor Linda Parks

Democrat Moorpark Councilman David Pollock

Democrat Oxnard Harbor Commissioner Jess Herrera

Democrat Westlake Village businessman David Cruz Thayne

Libertarian/Republican Akiva Werbalowsky

David Pollock will have his hands full with this field and Linda Parks is already chortling on Facebook that she will beat Tony Strickland when she gets into the top two at the June primary election.

However, although Linda Parks is well known in Thousand Oaks, unless she re-registers as a Democrat, Pollock or the others will likely win Democratic Party voters – whereas Tony Strickland will win the Republican vote.

Pollock has a huge Democratic Party mountain to climb, especially if Julia Brownley or Rep. Brad Sherman should decide to enter this race.

Mitt Romney Responds to Sarah Palin’s Criticism That He Isn’t Conservative Enough – Romney referred to Santorum as a lobbyist who also worked in Congress, contrasting that with his business background. In recent weeks social issues have taken the forefront of the campaign but Romney said, “I’m going to continue talking about what it takes to get the economy going. I know some people want to talk about other issues but frankly the issue that is beneath much of what’s happening in this country is the need to get our economy going again …”

Former Alaska governor, Sarah Palin, recently stated that Romney isn’t conservative enough. When asked about this, he responded, “I’m not quite sure what she’d be referring to. I’m pro-life, pro-traditional marriage, I believe in the Second Amendment. As governor, I balanced the budget every year I was in office, put in place a 2 million dollar rainy day fund, cut taxes 19 times.”

The GOP candidate went on to explain, “I think living life tends to make you more conservative. And if you’ve been in the business world, you can’t help but be conservative because if you don’t balance your budget in business, you go out of business.”

Romney doesn’t rule out Santorum as veep – Mitt Romney, whose campaign is preparing a multi-million dollar wave of negative advertising to persuade voters that Rick Santorum should not be president, says he is open to the possibility of choosing Santorum to be his running mate should Romney win the Republican nomination.

Romney appeared on Fox News Wednesday morning and was asked, “You and Rick Santorum, we haven’t seen you go head-to-head yet…In the big picture, could you see a scenario where you two team up?”

“Oh, I think it’s always possible to have people come together in our party, whether it’s Rick and I, or others in the party, who knows?” Romney responded. “It’s a little early to tell something like that, but we have similar views on issues — very different backgrounds.”

Romney’s “very different backgrounds” description of Santorum points to an argument Romney plans to use through the February 28 primaries in Michigan and Arizona and on through Super Tuesday on March 6. Santorum has no executive experience — “hasn’t run anything,” Romney will say — and is not qualified to be president. Romney, on the other hand, has run private businesses, the 2002 Olympics, and the state government in Massachusetts during his one term as governor.

Illegal Population Stops Declining under Obama – The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) will soon release its new estimate of the illegal immigrant population in the United States as of January 1, 2011. (All DHS estimates are for January 1.) Based on a preliminary analysis of some of the same data DHS uses, the Center for Immigration Studies estimates that 10.9 million (± 200,000) illegal immigrants lived in the United States on January 1, 2011. If this estimate turns out to be similar to the DHS estimate, it means that the illegal immigrant population stopped declining after President Obama took office after declining by 1 million during the last two years of the Bush administration ? 2007 to 2009.

DHS estimated that the number of illegal immigrants declined by 1 million during the last two years of the Bush administration, from 11.8 million in 2007 to 10.8 million in 2009. The decline was caused by a combination of a weak economy and stepped-up enforcement.

Based on data collected by the Census Bureau, the Center for Immigration Studies estimates an illegal population of 10.9 million (± 200,000) at the start of 2011, which is very similar to DHS estimate’s of 10.8 million for both January 1, 2009 and 2010.

In contrast, DHS estimates the illegal immigrant population declined by 180,000 from 2007 to 2008 and declined a further 850,000 from 2008 to 2009.

Our new estimate of the illegal immigrant population, if correct, means that the Obama administration has failed to significantly reduce the illegal immigrant population.